Locations such as industrial plants, refineries, offshore oil platforms, hotels, and hospitals employ multiple circuit breakers, typically located within a circuit breaker cabinet. The installation and removal of circuit breaker involves the engagement or disengagement of contacts of the circuit breaker with a power bus within the circuit breaker cabinet. Conventionally, this installation and removal is performed manually by a technician.
Manual installation and removal, however, may be undesirable for a variety of reasons. For example, when the contacts of the circuit breaker are engaged or disengaged with the power bus, an arc-flash may occur. This arc-flash is a rapid release of energy and can damage the circuit breaker, the circuit breaker cabinet, or other circuit breakers.
Thus, technology has been developed that reduces the possibility of an arc-flash. While this technology has been relatively successful, it may still involve the manual insertion of a tool into an apparatus within the circuit breaker, and the manual turning of that tool by a technician.
While the possibility of arc-flash is reduced by this technology, possibility of arc-flash still remains. Therefore, it is desirable for the manual actuation by a technician to be replaced by automated remote actuation.
However, numerous examples of reliable manually operated technology that reduces the possibility of an arc-flash are installed in locations, or in production, and it may be undesirable to replace or redesign such technology. Therefore, further design of devices that enable previously manually operated circuit breakers to be remotely actuated in an automated fashion, without a redesign of such manually operated circuit breakers, is desirable.